Finger-sparing table saw: Watch the hot dog demo

A hot dog put to the test suffers only a little nick. Watch the hot dog demo here.

As a reviewer points out, this safety feature doesn’t come cheap. Like air bags in a car, deployment of the protection mechanism is costly.

You get only one emergency stop per blade and brake. Besides $70 for a new brake, it’s another $50-100 for a new blade. It’s pretty high tech. The brake is a special aluminum block and electronic assembly with a fusible (i.e. burnable) wire holding the spring loaded brake block assembly in position. When the electronics “fires” after detecting contact with human flesh, the fusible wire is burned through by a high electric current “pulse”. When the wire burns through, the spring loaded aluminum block is shoved into the spinning blade. The blade cuts deeply into the block, and the block absorbs the considerable momentum energy of the blade, arbor, belt and motor. The result is that the blade and block get hot enough near the teeth of the blade to unsolder or weaken the teeth on the blade. In short the blade is ruined 50% of the time.